Reason magazine -- Hernando De Soto Interview

In seeking to make life easier for millions of Peruvians, Hernando De Soto has made his own life difficult. De Soto, the best-selling author of The Other Path (1989) and founder/director of Peru's Institute for Liberty and Democracy, is a champion of market economics and property rights in a part of the world that historically has shown little interest in such ideas. His efforts have led not only to political attacks from enfranchised power elites but to physical attacks from leftist groups, such as the Maoist Shining Path, who have placed him on the top of their hit list. His description of market mechanisms and the way they empower people has ramifications beyond the borders of Peru: Americans, De Soto wrote in The New York Times, have taken their economic and political systems for "granted, losing their ability to recognize and teach the importance of these institutions." When I went to interview De Soto last July, the armed soldiers at the institute entrance ordered my taxi driver to park half-way down the block. A car bomb had recently killed several people at the site, and the soldiers were not taking any chances. After getting out of the taxi, I walked along the concrete wall surrounding the property over to the guard booth controlling access to the courtyard. I showed my passport, and the officer in charge made a phone call to the house inside while another soldier asked me to open my briefcase. When the officer learned that I was expected, he became friendlier. As I walked across the courtyard, I could see the debris that still cluttered the area: a memento of the Shining Path's bomb.